4-22-03
by Elena Steier
Written to my friend in Germany...
The truth is, if you lived in the U.S., you'd be appalled. But anyhow, it doesn't matter. I think there was a time when cartoons might have made a difference, but right now things have gone too far. Every night, with a straight face, another captured Hussein operative is shown on TV as a character on a deck of cards. Anchors with a straight face say "today they've captured number 41, Abdul Al Tikriti, blah blah blah"
Yesterday, every major paper ran a story on how Rumsfeld's power has increased thanks to the Iraqi incursion. Right now I am watching a segment of Washington journal in which the question is whether or not the Defense Department should be involved in making foreign policy.
The Jon Stewart show last night had Stephen Colbert explaining this deck of cards as if these were ebay items while reading his notes off of the tablet of Hammurabi. They showed Rumsfeld's asinine statement about twenty vases, and the headline about the two cultural administrators who quit. (Bush's reply, according to Stewart: I had cultural administrators? ) In short, Stewart only needed to present the truth to be funny.
It's hard to tell the difference where the John Stewart Show ends and news begins...Fox, for example, is identical in content to CNN, And MSNBC. I watch CNBC for the business news and get the impression that the entire news media is now Jack Grubman, spewing nonsense in order to get the country to invest in what is in the end, a raw deal of an administration.
My daughter visited from Germany, and could not believe it. She says all the Germans ask, what has happened to America?
We are a very sick nation. We are in cardiac arrest. I'm afraid we lack leaders of vision and patriotism who are willing to risk their lives to rid of us our virus. And we have editorial cartoonists as well as political pundits who have decided that the last two years have been business as usual, but with different guys in charge.
But as I said, it all doesn't matter anymore. Time to just take out the brewskies and party, dude.
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